Early Islamic Art

From buildings like the Dome of the Rock to intricately carved ivory caskets and ornate copies of the Qur’an, the diversity, visual complexity, and beauty of early Islamic art is astounding.  This variety results in part from the wide and rapid geographic expansion of Islamic territories in the first decades after the appearance of the Prophet Muhammad.  As Muslims conquered new lands and encountered new visual languages, they incorporated and rejected influences to forge their own unique artistic culture that then diversified and blossomed under various dynasties.  This course will follow Muslims out of the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, Syria, Iran, and Iraq.  Through an examination of a variety of media from mosques to manuscripts and textiles to ceramics, we will study how Muslims adapted their visual expressions and needs to local as well as dynastic circumstances and thereby fostered the development of increasingly complex aesthetics that expressed their own unique identities and power.